Security Apps For Windows Phone

Let’s get this out of the way first. Antivirus and firewall apps haven’t yet made it to Windows Phone, largely because the platform hasn’t yet been considered worthy of any attackers to try to breach. This may change in the coming years as Windows Phone’s popularity grows (something that actually happens) and with the plan for Windows Phone, Windows and Xbox to all share the same operating system.

Lock Screen Settings

Keeping your Windows Phone 8.1 device secure is your first step. This is possible in the Lock screen, found in the Settings menu. From here, scroll down to Password and ensure it is switched On. Use the Change password button to set a new numerical password, which can be longer than the standard four digits, perhaps 10 or beyond!

With a lock screen code now set, click done to confirm and then ensure you set a timeout in the Require a password after dropdown box. This can be set as anything from 30 seconds to 30 minutes, with an additional option to require it each time you switch on your device screen.

Putting a password on your phone will stop anyone gaining unauthorised access – the longer the password, the better!

Where’s My Phone?

To use this, you should have already set up the service in Settings > find my phone, where you can toggle two options, one to always use push notifications to send commands… and another to save location periodically.

With these options enabled, using the Find My Phone service should be simple. The website will display the last known position of your phone or its current one if online, and you can use the Ring, Lock and Erase tools to secure your data.

For instance, a Microsoft account using Outlook.com, OneDrive, Xbox Live, Windows 8 and Windows Phone and even Office 365 could be compromised, giving the intruder access to your cloud storage and Xbox account. For many now using OneDrive, this could prove to be catastrophic.

Although Microsoft does a good job insisting upon login whenever you switch services through the browser, all an intruder has to do is use Outlook to change your secondary email address and your password to take control of all of these accounts. If this wasn’t bad enough, if you have a credit card attached to your account, in-app purchases made by an unauthorised user could prove expensive.

It gets worse, of course: a compromised phone could also provide access to online passwords for your favourite websites, if they’re saved to the device browser.